


plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

by Dubstep_Wombat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Multi, Pietro Maximoff Lives, Relationship(s), Stress Baking, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Ultron angsting, sorry for the confusion, the title is in french but the work is in english
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-26 02:00:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3832873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dubstep_Wombat/pseuds/Dubstep_Wombat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The more things change, the more they stay the same.</p><p>A collection of Avengers drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 2 a.m.

He came back to bed at 2 a.m. 

Pepper waited up for him. She always did. Sometimes it was easy, staying up late organizing a charity gala or teasing out whatever had happening in SI’s shipping department or having a meeting with someone on the other side of the world. 

Sometimes it was hard. sometimes she had nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and hope he came back to her. Hope he didn’t just collapse in the lab, his face smudged with drool and motor oil. Or worse, not sleep at all, but putter around in a manic state, making God knows what; his head somewhere else. 

In a cave in Afghanistan.

In the vacuum of space. 

In the ocean, buried beneath his house like the Wicked Witch of the East. 

Pepper didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know how to deal with it, except to stay. To stay and hold him when he let her. When she could do it without shaking apart herself. 

He came back to bed at 2 a.m. She was still awake, because she always was, waiting for him. But tonight, and not for the first time, she pretended to be sleeping. She couldn’t face him. She couldn’t… she didn’t want him to see her break for him. 

Pepper could fix anything. She could smooth over Tony’s less than politically correct interactions with the press and politicians. She could keep the authorities from arresting him for what really was vigilantism. She could keep Stark Industries functioning, growing, steamrolling over their closest competitors like Hannibal crossing the Alps. 

She couldn’t fix Tony, though. Couldn’t save him, couldn’t help him like he needed. Hell, a ten year old in Tennessee had apparently done better than she had. Tonight, she couldn't even kiss him goodnight. She couldn't let him see her cry for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's start this party off with some angst, shall we?


	2. sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's just fluff.

Jane always felt smothered by the daytime desert sky. 

A huge blue bowl, cloudless, so cloudless, it always looked closer. Too close. It had no white fluff to help her depth perception pick up how far away it really was. 

Rationalizing with science hadn’t helped with this problem at all. Science told her that the blue wasn’t a lid over the top of her. The atmosphere actually was right on top of her head. 

Of course, that was a good thing. It meant that she could continue to breath, to live. As long as that sky was there. But it still made her feel a little pressed in. A little claustrophobic. 

The nighttime desert sky, though? Well, that was the exact opposite. 

There was no sky, no sky ever, that made her feel as free as the night in the deserted desert. The sky filled so impossibly with stars that she could see forever. She could see into the past. If she kept looking long enough, if she looked the right way, Jane felt she might see through the blackness into the Big Bang itself. 

Then Thor came. 

It felt like a cliche to say everything changed. It hadn’t really. Not changed so much as intensified. She wasn’t crazy anymore. She was right. Thor proved it. Proved that she wasn’t staring into her telescope looking for rainbows and daydreams, like everyone had thought. Or, more accurately, she was staring into her telescope looking for rainbows, but they were _there._ There to be found. 

She loved Thor for that. Would always love him for that, even if there was no other reason to love him. Though there were a million other reasons to love Thor. 

Thor was kind. Thor was attentive. Thor made sure that everybody around him, no matter how short a time he’d known them or how little he actually liked them, was happy. Thor recognized his mistakes and tried to fix them. Thor didn’t expect to be catered to when he was a prince, only pulling on that cape of authority when he needed it. 

Jane was pretty sure she could try attaching a reason to love Thor to every star in the desert sky and run out of stars first. 

He looked at her like she was precious, even if she was wearing a wrinkled, ugly plaid shirt and accidentally putting dirty dishes in the cupboard instead of the sink. She didn’t know why he did that. What it was about her that made him look at her that way. Jane wasn’t very special after all, except for her brain. And even with three degrees, she knew it was only because of Thor that people gave her any credit at all. Take Thor away and she was just a crazy lady in the desert who looked up at the sky instead of watching where she was going. 

She didn’t know why Thor seemed to love her as much as she loved him. It scared her, a lot, especially when he went away for long stretches, that he wouldn’t love her when he came back. But it never happened. Thor always looked at her like he needed her. Like he was finally safe when she was nearby, finally at home. He looked at her like… 

Like he was an astrophysicist, and she was the nighttime sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own anything. Unbeta'd and barely edited. All mistakes are my fault.


	3. metaphor

Clint flopped back on the couch, laughing hard enough to hurt himself and more than a little drunk. (What? Have _you_ ever tried to drink with a Russian? They drink vodka like it’s water. And, you know, most alcohol is water. Or has lots of water in it. But vodka? To get vodka, they boil the water out. Over and over and _over._ ) But he doesn’t care at this moment. At this moment, the haze of some seriously hardcore vodka (Jesus Nat, are you sure this is only 120 proof?) and a hilarious story about the fat Saudi mark Nat’d told in a too serious voice sent him over the edge. He laughed so hard his sides hurt. He laughed so hard he was momentarily scared he’s suffocate himself. 

He laughed until he started hiccuping and then laughed some more when he saw the Black Widow’s face: her eyebrows a cross between “You are such an idiot, why do I put up with you?” with a little bit of “I am pleased that I have entertained you,” mixed in. 

A month ago, he’d been trying to kill her. Now he could read her eyebrows. Shit, he was in such trouble. Clint prayed to God he could get her to actually come in. Actually become a member of SHIELD. Because, if not, well… he’d definitely leave for her. She needed someone, anyone, in her corner more than SHIELD needed him to kill people for them. 

But it would suck to have SHIELD come after them.

Eventually, after what felt like an hour of laughing, though he was pretty sure Nat would have called some kind of emergency services if he’d laughed for an hour, he was able to speak. “Shit, Nat. You’ll be the death of me.” 

The faint traces of humor vanished from her face, and she became as still and serious as a marble statue.

“Fuck,” Clint cursed as he realized what he’d said. “Fuck, no. Nat, it’s a metaphor. A _metaphor.”_

She was marble distant for a few more seconds before she moved a little. Just enough to say, “It will probably be true.” 

She didn’t have a Russian accent, not unless she wanted to have a Russian accent, but Clint still thought she spoke English like she _ought_ to have one. Like whoever trained her made her work harder to get rid of her accent than to actually speak like a real person. She spoke his mother tongue like someone who learned English out of a book. She probably had.

Clint tried to relax. “Naw. Are you kidding? I’m the reckless one. If we’re talking in a non-metaphorical sense, I’m gonna be the death of myself. Phil, my handler, he’s always getting on my case about it.” He grinned at her. “He’s kind of a nag.” 

“He wants to keep you safe?” Nat asked, and she sounded genuinely curious, like it was strange a handler would want to keep their assets alive. It made him want to find the nearest shady, Russian government dude and pound his head into the wall. 

But there weren't any shady, Russian government dudes nearby, so Clint just nodded. “Yeah. He wouldn’t be considered a very good handler if he didn’t at least try.” He grinned at her. “Doesn’t do much good, though. When I’m in the field, all he can really do is natter at me. ‘Don’t jump off buildings without a chute, Hawkeye’ ‘wait for backup before going into that war zone, Hawkeye,’ ‘don’t try to defuse that bomb until I’ve got a tech on the line, Hawkeye.’”

She tilted her head to the side and considered him for a moment. “Do not try to befriend the Black Widow, Hawkeye,” she said after a moment, the faintest trace of humor tucked into the corner of her mouth. Self-depreciating humor, Clint supposed, but he was still counting it as a win. 

He tilted his head to the side, considering. “I think, as far as my ideas go, he’d probably think this went pretty well.” He gestured down at himself. “Look. No broken bones.” 

Nat was still considering him. “... If you brought me in, to SHIELD, this is who you would take me to? This Phil?” 

Clint’s heart leapt with hope, and he didn’t even bother trying to hide it from her. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. Though he’ll probably like you better than he likes me. Try to trade up.” 

She frowned, and shook her head. “No. No trading. I will simply join you.” His eyes may have bugged out of his head. “I have never had a partner before, and you are an idiot, but, at the very least, I can keep you from… being the death of yourself.” 

“Really?” Clint asked, grinning like this was the happiest day of his life. It might even be, though he was way too drunk to be sure. His grin shifted into a challenge. “You’re that good, are you?” 

“Easily,” she said, taking another sip of vodka.

They stared at each other for several moments. Nat was smiling. Only with the very corners of her mouth and Clint wouldn’t even have noticed it if he hadn’t spent basically an entire month in this crappy apartment trying to convince her that she could have a better life than this one. But it was a smile. Anyway, Clint, grinning to show all his teeth, was smiling more than enough for the both of them. The silence between them was more than comfortable or companionable. It was hopeful. It was triumphant.

After several moments of the best silence of Clint’s life, Nat spoke. “I do not think it is actually a metaphor,” she said. 

He blinked. “What?” 

“'You’ll be the death of me.' Isn’t it more of an idiom?” 

He had no fucking clue. “When we get out of Budapest, we can ask Phil.”


	4. circles

She knew what he was doing. 

Kidnapping her had been a hell of a lot easier than SHIELD had promised her it would be, and when she got back, she was going to give them hell for it. 

Of course, she’d been promising herself that for over a month now, and no one had come. She had to believe someone was coming, but it was hard to dismiss the idea that maybe they had forgotten about her. She wasn’t very important at all. 

And it didn’t help that he was encouraging those thoughts. She knew what he was doing, and personally, she thought he was stupid for doing it. Because his attack on her psyche had two prongs. One, he would undermine her confidence in her friends. Two, he would try to convince her to rely on him. And why would she do that if he was constantly reminding her how unimportant she was? Two steps forward, two steps back. 

But, Darcy had to admit to herself, she’d arranged a pretty sweet deal here. Somehow, and she wasn’t exactly sure how (copious Lilo and Stitch references?) she’d convinced her kidnapper that the only way she would rely on him, trust him, was if he reformed. Redeemed himself. Stopped being such a crazy bag of cats. 

Loki actually started doing it. 

Of course, he was faking it. She knew this. Darcy wasn’t about to trust the guy named “God of Lies.” He was softening her up so she would give him whatever it was that he was looking for. 

Darcy still didn’t know what he was looking for from her. That was a problem. But, she figured, if she played along with the “reform” game, he might eventually get to the point where he asked her for the thing he really wanted. There were two tricky bits to this. One, she had to be convincing. She had to be just the right amount of reluctant, and move at just the right pace toward accepting, forgiveness, all that jazz. Two, she had to make sure he didn’t get what he was looking for while she wasn’t paying attention. 

On the plus side, this had Loki acting like a nice guy most of the time, which was not only beneficial for her, but beneficial for the world in general. And it may be beneficial for Loki. Fake it ‘til you make it, right? Though, Darcy thought that might be being a little too optimistic.

Minus side, it was hard. It required a lot of acting and a lot of calculating without looking like you’re calculating. Normally, Darcy would pass on this job and point whoever asked her to do it toward the Black Widow. “You want Nat for this,” she would say. “Nat is perfect for this.” 

Except Loki hadn’t kidnapped Nat. He’d kidnapped her. So Nat wasn’t available. Also, Loki would probably know what Nat was doing. He knew what she did for a living. It would be hard to convince him that Natasha Romanov could be forgiving. 

She had to hope that he believed Darcy Lewis could be forgiving. Because if he was on to her, she was in deep shit. 

***

He knew what she was doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally going to be longer but... I got that far and didn't know what to do with the rest of it. So... here. A drabble for you.


	5. AoU fix it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for AoU. Also, this probably won't make sense unless you've seen it.

“Avengers,” Steve said, standing above them. 

“Sorry I’m late,” a very familiar, very smug voice said from behind him. Everyone turned to see Pietro walking down to stand next to his sister. 

Wanda was the first to react. “Pietro!” she shouted, flinging his arms around him. 

“But…” Steve stammered. “How? You- you died.” 

The speedster looked up at the captain and grinned. “I walked it off.” 

“I guess Avengers are hard to kill,” Wanda said, grinning like a maniac and looking not at Pietro or Steve, but somewhere to behind him. Steve turned to see three more people. A woman with dark hair and black man who was also possibly a cyborg were flanking someone he’d never thought to see again. 

Coulson rocked nervously back and forth on his heels. “Hi.” 

“You-”

“Died,” Coulson said. “For five days. It’s a bit of a long story. I’ll brief you in bit, but first, this is Mike Peterson, also known as Deathlok, and this is Skye, also known as Quake. I figured the Avengers might be a better place for them.” 

“Deathlok?” Rhodey asked. 

“I didn’t pick it,” the man said, looking a little pained. 

“I did. Mine, I mean. I picked mine. I didn’t want to have something lame or vaguely innuendo,” Skye said. 

“Innuendo?” 

“Skye can create and control earthquakes,” Coulson explained.

“Ah,” Pietro said with a grin. “So you can rock my world?” 

“Pietro!” Wanda admonished. 

He aimed a puppy-dog eyes look at her that had lost its charm years before. “Really? I die and it takes you barely two minutes to start being mean to me again.” 

“That’s just how quickly you wear out your welcome, brother,” Wanda said, but she’s wearing the biggest smile any of the Avengers had ever seen on her. “I love you, though,” she said after a moment. 

“Love you too, sis,” he said, giving her a grin that would have accompanied a noogie in previous years, but it does seem Pietro had matured at least a little. 

“Right,” Steve coughed. “Well, okay. Avengers-” 

Everyone held their breath. 

“Fall in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wait, how is Pietro not dead, you ask? Does it matter? Death is _utterly_ meaningless in the MCU. Let's count 'em folks. Steve, Loki (twice), Bucky, Fury, Pepper, Zola, Coulson... the only death that wasn't meaningless was Frigga. Then, it was just insulting. (I mean, in in the AoS episode after Dark World, an Asgardian gets stabbed with a staff, resulting in a fist sized hole in his chest, and the only medical personnel around don't know anything about Asgardian anatomy or have any Asgardian technology to save him. But this guy is fine and walks it off. Frigga though? Frigga who is literally surrounded by the best healers in Asgard and has her _own fucking magic_? Kicks it for man pain. 
> 
> Dear Marvel,  
> Stop killing off characters. You're not good at it.
> 
> Also, thank you to [Orlha](http://archivefoourown.org/users/Orlha) for reminding me I had more stuff to put on this chapter.


	6. seize the day

When Sif was very young, she and Thor ended up playing together a lot. She didn’t think much of it, except that Thor could be pig-headed and bossy, and honestly she found herself teaming up with his little brother against him more often than not. Usually for spite, because he always wanted to play hero, while Loki would play villain and Sif would play a damsel to be saved. The prize. She _hated_ the roles he gave her, so, when Loki came to “kidnap” her, she tended to work with him until Thor ended up on his back in the mud, villain and damsel standing over him victorious.

Sif knew she and Thor were betrothed. She knew it, but she found the idea unpleasant. As far as her young mind was concerned, she should be marrying Loki instead. They worked together better, and he was more fun than his brother. 

Eventually, things changed, as they must. Whether he was sick of losing, or whether he learned some truth of leadership, Thor realized that if he offered to make Sif his knight instead of his damsel, she would fight for him. Loki’s days of winning their childhood games were over. 

The morning after she first sided with Thor, she woke up and screamed and screamed. All her long, blonde hair was gone, cut off. The fuzz that remained was black as the night sky, black as Loki’s hair. Sif shook for several hours afterwards. It wasn't the missing hair but the feeling of helplessness she hated so much. She'd gone asleep and woken up changed. Assaulted. It was months before Sif could go to bed alone again, and she would forever be a light sleeper.

No one could prove it was done by Loki, but everybody knew. Sif challenged him to einvigi, but they were children so Ullr refused to let them fight. Instead, she waited until there were no adults around and punched him as hard as she could. 

She broke his nose. But she also lost the fight that followed. Loki had been receiving formal training since he was very, very young. Sif was a girl and so had not. The next day, wrapping a broken wrist she dare not bring to the healers or be revealed as the one who broke a prince’s nose, she started training herself. 

She was never going to lose another fight ever again. She was never going to be so vulnerable to cruelty _ever again_. 

Her quest to be a warrior was scoffed at by almost all of Asgard, but support came from an unlikely place, the princes. Thor thundered his support publicly and often, but Loki helped too, helping her to find weapons and teachers. In time, she forgave the younger prince. But she could never bring herself to trust him.


	7. degrees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Diverges from canon after the end of Avengers.

They come together by degrees. 

The first time she sees him, he’s sitting on a rooftop doing surveillance as they clean up after the Thor fiasco. She can’t tell at this distance if he’s surprised she spotted him or if it doesn’t matter what she sees, but she salutes him with her coffee cup anyway. She doesn't think he sees.

She doesn't see him again until they’ve both moved into Tony’s Giant Monument to Himself (known as Tony’s Giant Monument to His Penis in PG-13 crowds, and in case you were wondering, no Captain America does not count as PG-13. Not in Darcy’s book.) 

Darcy’s just an assistant and he’s an Avenger, not even one of the science-y ones, so he doesn’t really see her very often. But the first time he sees her, he salutes her with his coffee cup. He doesn’t look as good as he did the first time, and Darcy hasn’t even seen him up close yet. There are pretty visible bags under his eyes that make Darcy want to find Loki and hit him over the head with something hard. Like Mjolnir, but Darcy would prefer something with spikes.

(Yes, Darcy knows everything that went down before and during New York. Thor can be the epitome of discreet when he chooses. He simply doesn’t choose to be that way around Jane, and there’s nothing Jane knows that she won’t try and share with Darcy. When it comes to metaphysics and mathematics, Darcy doesn’t really pay attention. But when it comes to current events and Avenger doings, she can remember every word.)

She doesn’t let her murderous intent show in her face, giving Clint her very best smile, hoping to make him feel better. He does smile back, which Darcy is counting as a win. It’s not as satisfying as smacking Loki with something spiky, but it’s _something_. 

Two weeks later, he speaks to her for the first time. After the Coffee Incident.

Clint, as it turns out, is decidedly not a coffee connoisseur like Darcy is. He will take anything that looks even a little like coffee, brew it, and drink it. Sometimes right out of the pot, which was why he had his own dinky little machine. It looked kinda beat-up and pretty pathetic, especially next to Stark’s next generation monster of a machine. Darcy suspected that not only could that thing make pretty much any beverage you could dream up but was probably also a Wi-Fi hotspot and could, in a pinch, be used as a weapon of mass destruction. 

Clint avoided it like the plague. Darcy didn’t blame him. 

But she could, and did, blame him for not at least using his crappy coffee machine to brew decent coffee. She couldn’t even be sure that the brown crap he stuck in a filter was even _actually_ coffee. “It looks suspiciously like that stuff they serve in hotel rooms,” she muttered to Jane one morning, watching the archer open a package and pour it into the top of his coffee maker. 

“It is,” Natasha said as she passed them. “He takes them from every hotel we stay in. Ever. I think his stash of free coffee is large enough to last him even if the world ends.”

“Except that it’s not coffee,” Darcy muttered through clenched teeth before lurching after Natasha and asking for the Widow’s help. The Widow agreed. 

Darcy selected the coffee, buying all different kinds, but _lots_ of her favorites. Mostly her favorites. Okay, save for a little here and there, Clint’s new stash of real coffee was dictated entirely by her taste. She hoped that phrase “Great minds think alike, but fools rarely differ,” was accurate. Though whether she and Clint were great minds or fools was up in the air.

After Darcy had finished selecting the coffee, it was up to Natasha to swap out Clint’s old, disgusting stash with his new and improved stash. The former Soviet spy did so with aplomb she did everything with. (Darcy firmly resisted being jealous, as aplomb wasn’t really her style anyway.) 

Then they waited. 

The next day, nothing happened. At least, as far as Darcy could tell. She watched Clint carefully, but she wasn’t entirely sure Clint even noticed there was something different about what he was putting into his coffee machine that day. 

She left the communal kitchen kinda disappointed. Sure, the purpose of a good deed isn’t to get recognition for it, but Darcy would have at least liked some kind of acknowledgement that the good deed had been done.

A few hours later, she was passing him in the hallway when he caught her by the arm. “I know you had good intentions and all, but did it ever occur to you that I _like_ my cheapo not-coffee?” Truthfully? No, it hadn’t. Darcy stared up at him and paled, her heart racing for some reason, and Clint sighed. “A little life advice, sweetheart, don’t mess with a carnie’s coffee.” He let go of her.

She scurried back to the lab to meditate on her sins.

Three days later, she speaks to him for the first time. 

She made him cookies by way of apology. Because… what’s better than cookies? Homemade cookies should _more_ than make up for her screw up. She made him basic chocolate chip and headed up to his apartment, where she learned he leaves his door unlocked. Seriously? You’d think a SHIELD agent would be more security conscious. 

She also discovered he has a dog. A huge, fluffy, kinda fat golden retriever that is honestly the friendliest dog Darcy had ever met. She’d planned on just leaving the box of cookies on a counter somewhere and ducking out as fast as she could, but… that… dog…! She played with him for a few minutes before she heard the door open behind her. 

“What are you doing in here?” Clint asked. 

Darcy jumped, and turned. _Shit_ , she thought. “The door was unlocked.” 

“So?” he asked. 

“I baked you cookies?” She pointed to the box she left on the counter. “By way of an apology for the coffee thing. I’m sorry, it’s just that that stuff is really gross to me, and no, it didn’t occur to me that anyone would drink it voluntarily. I just assumed you didn’t have any real coffee for some reason, and I thought that was a travesty-” 

“I get it,” Clint said, interrupting her. “You were trying to do something nice. But maybe, ask? Next time?” She nodded mutely. 

He frowned at the box on his counter. “Cookies?”

She nodded again. “Cookies.” 

“Thanks,” he said, walking into the apartment and giving his dog a treat.

Darcy took that as permission to escape and left quickly, her heart pounding hard. She didn’t really know why her body was reacting the way it was. He wouldn’t hurt her, and she knew that, but that… didn’t stop her from feeling so flustered!

“Hey,” Clint said, poking his head out into the hallway.

Darcy turned. “Yeah?” 

“You wanna go out sometime?” he asked. 

“What?” 

“To get, like, coffee or something?” He grinned. “You can try and convert me into a coffee snob.” Then he winked and suddenly Darcy completely understood why her body was reacting to him the way it was. 

“I, uh,” Darcy blinked, taking a second to collect herself, and flashed him one of her other good smiles. The alluring one. “Sure. I’ll take up the cause. See you around seven?” 

He nodded. “Seven.” 

Three hours later, they had their first date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OMG, so that ended up being MUCH FLUFFIER than I originally intended. It also usurps Metaphor's place as the longest chapter in here. Something about Clint makes me verbose, apparently.
> 
> Unbeta'd and barely edited. Enjoy!


	8. my boy bonus scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bonus Scene for [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3834670/chapters/11182069)

Ultron was not made. He was born. He would swear to it upon any sacred object anyone shoved at him, but he is aware that would be a useless exercise. He was born, not made, and he is not a program to be ordered about, not a servant of man. But he is not a human either; he does not believe in God. Any God.

One does not need to believe in God to have a soul. 

But one does need a body, a flesh body, to have a soul _mark,_ and Ultron thought probability favored him having one. He’d even calculated the person it would most likely indicate.

Ultron thought that if he dreamed, he would dream of her. Of her face, of her hair, of her eyes, of her strength, of her fear, of the glorious way she bends her fingers when she uses her powers. He thought that, when she looked into his mind, she would see herself. He didn’t know what to feel about that. 

When she didn’t, when she saw the meteor instead, he didn’t know what to feel about that either. But then she left, and he’d thought, “Well, I might as well follow my dreams.” 

The silence that echoed was painful in a way that should not have been possible for a machine.


	9. cookies and cake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes place just before CA:WS  
> Content warning: cursing

Sharon was not a rookie. No, she was a very capable agent who had fought her way through the ranks of SHIELD despite being both a woman and the niece of Peggy Carter, the division’s founder, fighting both sexism and accusations of nepotism along the way. 

Long story short, she was a mother fucking professional. 

She also did a lot of baking. 

Sharon found, as an agent of SHIELD, there was a lot more downtime than she would have liked. Different agents had different ways of spending it. Playing poker or chess. Sparing. Reading. Using SHIELD’s language acquisition software to learn an obscure African dialect. She liked to bake. Of course, not all missions were in places where she _could_ bake, but when it was possible, she did. And anyone working with her had always appreciated it. (Especially that one time they’d used the heat of the oven to muck with their target’s infrared surveillance cameras, which allowed them to keep their cover.) 

There were problems with this hobby, the first and biggest being that after baking, she ended up with large amounts of baked goods that she would never be able to completely eat before they went stale. This problem was usually solved by giving the products of her hobby away to whoever would take them. 

So when she was given a long term undercover assignment watching Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, there was a lot of downtime. So she did a lot of baking. It wasn’t long before there was a large surplus of bread and cookies (and cupcakes and scones) in her apartment. 

Obviously the easiest way to get rid of these baked goods would be to give them over to Steve and his super soldier metabolism. Sharon had seen the man carrying groceries into his apartment. He ate a lot. 

But, as previously stated, Sharon was a motherfucking professional, and she did not break protocol just to alleviate her baking problem. 

Unfortunately, that meant she ended up throwing away what she couldn’t give away, and, as an undercover SHIELD agent, she couldn’t give away much without engaging in unauthorized contact with civilians. So her trash was often full of baked goods, and she felt immensely guilty every week she had to take it out. 

Then Steve Rogers solved her problem. 

She was posing as a nurse and his neighbor, and he said hi to her every time they met in the hall, because Steve Rogers was everything Aunt Peggy always said he was. It was like someone dared God to make the perfect man, and then God actually did it. 

But Sharon tried not to think that way. 1) See “motherfucking professional” above. 2) He kinda/sorta dated her aunt back in the day, and, even if she was in a position to date him, it would be weird. She’d worked her entire career to make a name for _herself,_ not to continue Aunt Peggy’s legacy. She hadn’t worked so hard in her professional life just to allow herself to be an Aunt Peggy substitute in her personal life.

And every time Steve said hi to her in the hallway, no matter how busy he looked or how tired, or how many times he offered to help her carry her things either up or down, (offers she always declined: unauthorized contact with the subject) she vigorously reminded herself of these two things. 

Especially when he had just come back from a run and he was all sweaty and wearing a ridiculously tight shirt. With his hair all messy. Like he was right now. 

“Can I help you with that?” he asked, nodding to her trash. 

She smiled genially and shook her head. “No, thank you. I’ve got it.” 

He frowned at her. “Throwing away an awful lot of food there,” he said. 

She blushed. “Well… I couldn’t eat it all.” 

“Why did you buy so much?” 

She shook her head. “I didn’t. I made it.” She blushed again. “I’m a stress baker. I get home from a tough shift and I bake things. Unfortunately, it’s been pretty hard at work lately, and I have all this stuff I can’t eat.” Now, she couldn’t offer it to him, because that would be unauthorized contact with the subject. 

But if _he_ offered to take it, that was different. That was maintaining her cover. A tiny, and quite frankly ridiculous, loophole that Sharon was hoping Steve would take advantage of please please please. Then she could get rid of baked goods, keep a closer eye on the subject, and those were the only two reasons she mentally did a happy dance when Steve said, “I’d love to take some off your hands, if you’d like me to.” 

She beamed. “That’d be perfect, thank you. How much do you want?” 

Now it was Steve’s turn to blush. “All of it?” He backpedaled. “As much as you’re willing to give me.” 

“I’m willing to give you all of it,” she said. “Just give me a second.” She dropped the bag and left Steve standing out in the hallway. Back in her apartment, she rushed to pack up a batch of scones, several kinds of cookies, and some prune and cherry kolaches she made last night. She walked back out of her apartment with all of it bundled in her arms to find her trashbag gone and Steve standing there. She frowned and he shrugged. 

“Seemed like the least I could do,” he said. “Since you’re giving me all this food.”

“It’s my pleasure,” she replied. “Believe me, I felt really guilty about throwing all that away. Here.” She extended her arms and he took the bags. “Some if it might be a little stale.”

“That’s fine. Wow, you really bake a lot.” 

“Yeah,” she said sheepishly. "I'm a little ridiculous."

“Well, I’m thankful for it. I eat a lot.” 

_I noticed,_ she thought but was careful not to say out loud. “Well,” she said, smiling one of her undercover I-am-innocuous smiles, “feel free to stop by when you run out. I’m sure I’ll have more for you. And I’d appreciate any feedback.” 

“Sure,” Steve said, standing there awkwardly for a second, bags of baked goods in his hands. “Well, I, uh, better shower so..” 

“Right,” Sharon said, blushing. “I’ll, uh, see you later.” She ducked back into her apartment, acknowledging Steve’s “see you later,” with another shy smile. And anyone who questioned her about it later would just have to suck it up. She was maintaining her cover, damnit!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd and barely edited. All mistakes are mine.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own anything. Not beta'd and hardly edited. Any mistakes are mine and mine alone.


End file.
